To Protect
by Crimson White
Summary: Lucy is his little sister. Innocent. Small. Naive. Lucy is a Queen of Narnia. Brave. Strong. Proud.


First – characters aren't mine, as usual!

So yeah – I finally wrote something. And it really did just come to me last night! A relaxing break between assignments – yech!

Hope you enjoy.

Crimson.

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**Edmund swipes his hand across his brow, hard earned sweat drips from his fingers. He clenches his sword harder between his fingers. He stares down his opponent. And suddenly the tension within is too much and he's slicing and darting and – really – just whacking the poor straw dummy, which bends and creaks beneath his sword, to pieces.**

_That greasy, self absorbed, disgusting –_

**Edmund twirls and the dummy's torso sags heavily, his blade ringing with satisfaction.**

"_Edmund?" _

**He can see her face, earnest, smiling, golden hair pulled away from her brow with a pearl comb.**

"_I'm not feeling too well – no don't worry!" Lucy smiles, but her eyes are tired. "I just need to rest." She reaches up to place a kiss on his cheek. "Make my excuses to Peter, will you?"_

**His feet cross each other, perfectly balanced, he crosses to the Dummy's other side and begins the mutilation again.**

"_No, no, the Galma shipment isn't due another month – excuse me, Lady Ertya – My Lord?" Edmund cuts himself off as Peter approaches. His brother bows to the Lady, who nods her head respectfully before turning away._

"_Seen Lucy?" Peter asks his voice pitched carefully neutral. _

"_It's alright; she wasn't feeling well – just left in fact," Edmund tells him. But far from relieving his brother's carefully concealed worry, the frown in Peter's forehead deepens._

**Edmund grunts, his arms are screaming at him to stop this madness, but his mind is a whirl. Its face is cut grotesquely across the mouth, it's laughing at him, mocking this endless battle against himself. He can't win.**

"_Have you spoken to Sir Aldon, this eve?" Peter's body is facing him, but his eyes are away, over Edmund's head, searching intently._

"_Not yet, no. Why?" _

_Edmund replies with an easy, practised smile. They are very skilled, he and his brother, at holding conversations that appear to be about nothing more than the weather. No one can tell anything is amiss. Indeed, Edmund is not entirely sure anything is amiss. But something about the way his brother is holding himself is not right._

"_He's – an acquired taste," Peter replies tensely._

"_Oh?"_

"_Very fixated on Lucy," Peter adds._

"_Oh." Edmund's eyes are now scanning the crowd behind Peter._

**He'd seen the man, of course, scanned him and assessed him from the moment he'd walked into the room. A round, portly man, strong, no doubt – a warrior gone slightly to seed.**

**Edmund stabs the dummy viciously, his sword disappearing into the straw stomach.**

"_He's not here." _

"_No."_

_Peter's hand is clenched around Rhindon. Edmund is already moving away. Normally when he moves through a crowd, he's stopped by every second person wanting a word or a favour, but now something makes them move out of his way._

"_East Gardens, in case she got sidetracked." Peter tells him and veers away. Edmund doesn't even nod, he heads towards the door his little sister had disappeared through ten minutes ago. He's walking, he's running, faster and faster._

**"You've sufficiently killed the scarecrow, Edmund."**

**His mind shuts down altogether. He pauses. He needs to know, to be sure. So Edmund swings around, brings his sword up and across his chest. It's a hard blow, nothing barred. But Lucy raises her own short sword and the blow glances away. Her face is screwed up with effort, but she holds. And when he swings again, she's ready, swiftly darting away from his reach. She's faster than he, but she has to be, because he's stronger.**

**"Edmund," she says. And she looks entirely unfrightened and strong and he lets his sword arm drop.**

_At first he can just hear them. Aldon's voice, deep and gravely, Lucy's higher murmur in reply._

_He's just around the corner when suddenly he can hear Lucy as clear as a bell._

"_No. Step away from me, Sir." Her voice wobbles slightly._

**"Why are you so angry?" she asks him, stepping closer, letting her own sword drop to the ground.**

**"Why aren't you?" he shoots back.**

"_Come, on, sweetness, such a coquettish little thing!" Aldon laughs._

"_I command you, Sir, as Queen of Narnia, to release my person, immediately or suffer the consequences."_

_Aldon scoffs. "Consequen –"_

_But his reply is cut off by Lucy's shout and his own grunt. Edmund sprints the remaining distance between them, crashing around the corner, his sword flying into his hand. But Lucy is just standing there, barely to the older man's ribs, her face set with anger, and Aldon is perfectly still before her, staring down into her icy blue eyes. It isn't until Edmund is right beside her that he notices she's got her dagger pressed to the man's gut, digging so sharply there is a small spot of red._

**"Because," Lucy's eyes are steady upon him, "Aldon is currently in our dungeons and everything is perfectly fine."**

**Edmund turns back to his straw man, picking up his sword, anger rising unexpectedly.**

**"Everything is not perfectly fine."**

**He raises his arm to deliver another death blow, but a small hand on his elbow stills him movement. She doesn't even have to say anything, her eyes just burn into the side of his face.**

**He sighs. "You're so much like Peter."**

**Lucy laughs with surprise. "And this is making you upset?"**

**Edmund tosses his sword; it lands with a resounding ring into the earth by their feet. "How is it that the two of you can make me talk, just by looking at me?" he complains.**

**The night is still around them.**

_Edmund is simultaneously stunned and bewilderingly proud. Lucy's face is set, it isn't until she opens her mouth and her lips quiver just the slightest that he sees how effected she is._

"_Brother, arrest this man."_

_Edmund turns Aldon, the man is quivering with fear, so that he doesn't see that Lucy's hands are also shaking as she tries to re-sheath her dagger. It takes three tries._

**"It should never have happened," Edmund says fiercely.**

**Lucy nods. "Perhaps. But it did." She turns her face away and stares blankly at the decapitated straw man. "And I thank Aslan that it happened to me and not another lady of the court who would not have been so readily able to defend herself."**

**His sister is sometimes so very extraordinary that Edmund does not know how to express his devotion to her in words. Instead he wraps his arm around her shoulders and brings her head to rest on his chest. He kisses her temple.**

_Peter of course sends Aldon straight to the dungeon, stripped of his titles and disgraced. They must make the walk through the grand hall to escort the prisoner and Edmund hesitates. He glances at Lucy; her hair is in disarray and her dress slightly off centre. There will be talk._

"_Perhaps –"_

_But Lucy lifts her head and sets her jaw; her eyes are burning with the fire that Edmund only so rarely sees in his older brother on the battle field. _

_She leads them into the room._

**Lucy takes a deep breath. "I'm not completely naive, you know," she tells him.**

**"I wish you were."**

**She snorts in his shirt. "Well I'm not." She takes one of his hands in hers. "I know about these things, Edmund, that some men are not as chivalrous as my brothers."**

**His chest burns. "I'll protect you, always," he swears it to her, to himself.**

**"You can't," she replies matter of fact, "not always."**

**Edmund feels that his sister has grown too much. That she understands all too suddenly the way of the world.**

**"But you've done the next best thing, Edmund."**

**"What's that?"**

**Lucy tilts her head and smiles slightly. "You've taught me to protect myself."**

_Lucy stands before him with her too big blade and her bright eyes and Edmund thinks that he will teach her to amuse himself._

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Er....So? Review if you have something to say! Hate? Love? Indifference? I'll take it all. ; )


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